Monday, September 12, 2016

for debate - ILPS Statement on the 2016 G20 Summit China

Published: 06 September 2016

Issued by the Office of the
Chairperson, International Coordinating Committee

The G-20 was originally set up after
the Asian financial crisis in 1999 as a forum for finance ministers
and central bankers from the world’s largest economies including
China, India, Brazil and South Africa. Its expanded membership
beyond the G7 was both a reflection of the historic shift towards a
more multi-polar world order but also an attempt by the old
imperialist powers to keep so-called “emerging economies” within
their ambit.

Despite failing spectacularly at
preventing a repeat of the 1999 financial crisis, the G20 was
elevated to the status of “premier forum for global economic
coordination” in the wake of the 2008 global financial meltdown to
stabilize the world economy that was reeling from the worst crisis
since the Great Depression of the last century. Since then, its core
tasks have been to secure financial stability, reignite capitalist
growth and prevent the slide to “protectionism” among capitalist
economies.

Eleven summits after the Lehman
Brothers collapse, the G20 has clearly failed on all counts.

Despite playing up the need for
regulatory reform to curb financial speculation and shadow banking
practices that led to the 2008 financial crisis, the actual measures
undertaken by the imperialist countries are ensuring that even
greater and more dangerous convulsions are in store in the near
future. Bank bailouts have transformed the private debt crisis into
a sovereign debt crisis, with total government debt outstanding now
at $59 trillion – twice its level in 2008.

The ultra-loose monetary policy
adopted by the imperialist central banks have certainly succeeded in
putting more money in the hands of the financial oligarchy. But this
has inflated total global debt – including government, household,
corporate and bank debt – to $199 trillion by mid-2014, up 40%
since 2007 and growing at a much faster pace than global GDP.

Moreover, instead of stimulating more
investment, job creation and spending in the real economy, much of
the extra liquidity pumped into the system through quantitative
easing is being funnelled into share buy-backs, mergers and other
speculative activities that are inflating asset prices of equities,
bonds and property in some countries. Thus new asset bubbles are
forming everywhere, setting the stage for new financial crises to
erupt and disrupt the system anew.

Meanwhile, even by the optimistic
forecasts of the IMF, growth prospects for the global economy remain
dismal and highly vulnerable to new economic and geopolitical risks.
It expects the global economy to grow by just over 3 percent this
year. But the advanced capitalist countries remain essentially
stagnant with only 1.8 percent growth while the underdeveloped
economies most dependent on raw material exports are expected to
contract with the continued decline in commodity prices in the face
of a protracted global depression.

Official figures also show that
joblessness is at an all time high of 200 million people globally,
with another 3 million expected to join the ranks of the unemployed
over the next two years.

Moreover, for the first time in three
decades, the volume of world trade has been slowing relative to
world GDP, which is not even growing significantly. Indeed, in
dollar terms, world merchandise trade fell by 13 percent and trade
in services declined by 6.5 percent last year due to depressed
demand globally. Not surprisingly, this stagnation in global trade
is being accompanied by a rise in protectionist measures as
competition between monopoly firms and their states intensify.

According to the WTO, more
trade-restrictive measures were adopted by countries in 2015
compared to previous years, and G20 members were responsible for the
bulk of these despite repeated ad hominems against
beggar-thy-neighbor policies. Between mid-October 2015 and mid-May
2016, G20 economies applied 145 new trade-restrictive measures,
equating to an average of almost 21 new measures per month. Leading
this trend towards protectionism is the US and Russia while at the
same time forcing other countries to open up their economies. The
intensifying trade wars between states parallel the marked rise in
geopolitical conflicts and confrontations in virtually all regions
of the world.

In this year’s Summit in Hangzhou
under China’s leadership, the G20 once again promises to deliver
more “inclusive economic growth” through coordinated
macroeconomic policy, open trade and innovation. But the final
declaration released at the Summit’s conclusion last September 5
is long on rhetoric, short on concrete and measurable actions. It
lists vague commitments to promote a “new industrial revolution”,
“digital economy development” and “innovative growth”. But
these remain premised on fostering private sector innovation (e.g.
through protecting monopoly intellectual property rights,
subsidizing infrastructure development for industries, and enforcing
trade and investment rules that favor transnational corporations).

All these will only intensify of the
exploitation of the masses of the world, increase the concentration
and overaccumulation of capital in the hands of the monopoly
bourgeoisie, and exacerbate the crisis of overproduction that is at
the root of the global economic malaise that the G20 is purportedly
trying to resolve.

As the imperialist powers redouble
their efforts to resuscitate and preserve the global monopoly
capitalist system, then more so must the people become more astute
in exposing the real roots of the crisis of the global capitalist
system and oppose the false solutions and new attacks on the people
by the G20, the international financial institutions and the US and
other imperialist states.###

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